Liberte, Fraternite, Equity?

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

The problem with the DIE (Diversity inclusion, equity (WHY would I use their order to obscure what they are?)) proposals is that they’re the French revolution’s answer to problems no one in America really has or has ever had, and certainly problems no on in the US has had in living memory time.

So, to explain, the reason that the French tried to establish EQUALITY not before the law but of results is that they were overthrowing millennia of purposeful, legal discrimination.

In that, they were similar to the American revolution in that they were overthrowing established organization of society that, if you looked closely and squinted, went all the way back to the Roman occupation. The parts that were different from America is that America was reaching into a tradition of English law, arguably going all the way back to the Magna Carta, and that Americans had the advantage of doing it in a new land, where a few generations of hardscrabble and innovative living had knocked the bounds of the culture a bit, so it wasn’t hardened in place.

But you can see how at the dawn of the French revolution, looking at some of the serfs (I don’t remember if the villeins were still land-bound at that time in France, since the liberation spread throughout Europe at different times, after the Black Plague (and didn’t reach Russia till the twentieth century and in an unfortunate way)) who were basically slaves attached to the land and sold or inherited with the land, people who had been raised for centuries if not millenia in the idea that there were people naturally born their superiors and with the right to order them around, it was easy to think “Well, we have to knock all this off and make them have the same equal results to their lives, by law.”

It was probably the same as the Fraternite, which I have no clue how they meant to impose from above. And let’s not even mention liberte in conjunction with those two, unless you want to break your head.

Now, just because I understand how they got to that conclusion, it doesn’t mean it was right. In fact, it was probably the opposite of right and goes a long way towards explaining why France has remained a world power only in its own mind and why right now its greatest value is being parceled off willy nilly into retirement parcels for British and Germans.

Look, yeah, they were facing generations of being put down. And yes, of course family history has an influence on what people can or should achieve. Your parents’ traumas influence you, and chase you all your life. There’s a reason I was “born owing money” and feeling like I need to justify my existence. And my kids, too, to an extent. And there’s habits of my mind that limit my achievements. Like being really averse to financial risk.

So yeah, those families of serfs faced an uphill battle, mostly inside their minds. But here’s the thing: the revolution happened at all because the world was changing. Between the industrial revolution and the serious breaking of boundaries of the the Black Plague mortality, once the government-enforced-discrimination was removed, people would have figured it out. People would have — were already, to a great extent — found their way to better places, education, different work and more prosperous lives.

Trying to cut the generations of “getting to a decent place” by law simply meant enforcing a different type of discrimination, one that eventually fed Madame la Guillotine and various different forms of despotic or f*cked in the head government all the way to today’s socialists.

Because the government can’t do certain things. Basically anything that involves changing humans, healing humans, making humans into different creatures, even if that’s better, more empowered creatures.

You know the thing in the Bible about the sins of the fathers being visited on the children for seven generations. That’s an optimistic view, because each generations adds their own sins and their own trauma. No human has ever got through childhood without some trauma. Being the wrapped-in-cotton children of overprotective parents comes with a trauma of its own, as we have proof daily. All the triggered generations of oversensitive people are ultimately victims of that. And those who find their way to reproduction will pass something of that trauma to their kids, though I don’t know what.

The point being you can’t really guess what trauma each family is dealing with from social class, or generation, let alone skin color or general orientation of the children.

Which might be why our “equity” attempts are possibly the dumbest of them all. With spice and sugar on top.

No?

Look, at who’s covered by “equity”. Everyone but white males.

And what has brought it about? Well, the fact that after generations of mandated government discrimination in favor of everyone but white males, that vaunted and amazing “equality hasn’t been reached. Also, of course, the fact that every single leftist is a not so secret racist, sexist and homophobe. I.e. they think these people cannot possibly achieve, without government intervention. (And part of the reason they hate my guts with a burning passion. And those of other people like me. Because, honestly, if immigrant chick with zero contacts, writing in her third language can be published and achieve a following, why do people need the help of the great white saviors of government and philanthropy (or affirmative action publishing, and stupid awards for having a vagina or being able to tan) to get where they wish to go?)

Let’s think about it. Arguably the people with most claim to needing equity are those black Americans who are descended from slaves. Now, keep in mind, please, this is at this point not all of the American black population and probably not even a majority (hard to tell.) Take Obama please — I certainly don’t want him — not only doesn’t he have any American slave ancestors, but both sides of his family, regardless of color, were slave dealers and slave traders. Which you might say has a certain fearful symmetry. The same for Commie La Whorish who, to put the icing on that cake, isn’t black in the sense of having African ancestors. Well, not any more than the rest of us, at least if you believe the out of Africa hypothesis.

Anyway, you can sort of see where “descended from slaves” would be in the same position as the serf families in France after the revolution. “Been treated as things so long the entire family culture is corrupted and they’re held down in a unique way.”

Well, kind of right? Because that might have made sense immediately after manumission. Except that people, once the government wasn’t telling them they were things, picked up and moved to industrial states and found jobs. Save for government enforced discrimination, they were by and large getting better, becoming productive, joining the rest of the country.

The important thing there was removing the government-enforced discrimination (which was unconstitutional anyway) not bringing in stuff like “affirmative action” which is discrimination under a newer and more exciting cover. But it’s the same sh*t.

Then they added to affirmative action women…. who had been integrating into the work force since contraception made it possible and labor shortages (and high taxation) made it desirable. Now that’s absolutely bizarre, because family culture wise, women came from all across the spectrum. You can’t say that discriminating FOR women is going to make women more likely to succeed.

In fact, ultimately, all these attempts at discriminating FOR people or against people do is achieve the opposite result.

Look at the Biden administration. No, really look. They are basically a good representation of every single big corporation out there right now. When you go looking for a “diverse” workforce, you’re of necessity not considering the other reasons to hire. Because you can’t really say “these people have equal qualifications.” They don’t. No one ever does.

So, they’re hiring people for interesting skin color, or having a vagina, or you know, liking doggy sexual play and stealing women’s garments. And what becomes obvious daily is that not only aren’t they picking competent people, but none of them have any idea what competence even is, and couldn’t find it with two hands, a seeing eye dog, and competence finding GPS. But the people they are hiring are “diverse” in the sense they have a diverse means of failing. Each one in his or her or heaven knows what’s way.

It’s made worse, and brings on covert, undercover discrimination against the favored classes when you — like me — have raised kids over the last 30 years, and have seen how schools go out of their ways to hold boys back and given every girl a gentle-lady’s A. From discrimination in favored ways of learning, to demanding of the boys things they are simply not neurologically equipped to do (boys and girls mature at different rates) to actively favoring girls in grades, not to mention praise.

In every graduation I attended for my kids, except for two, all the spots of honor and praise went to girls or women. Those girls and women I knew personally were not only unimpressive, but truly spectacularly lackluster.

In the same way in teaching, I found that men usually came out of high school with lower grades than women. And far better prepared.

Which is how we get to the insidious part of discrimination. Go through history. Any minority hard-discriminated against, unless you’re willing to adopt outright genocidal tactics, flourishes more than any group discriminated for by the government.

Don’t believe me? Go look at history. Look hard.

Dave Freer will hold witness that when South Africa discriminated against “people of color” (No, not just black people. There was a hierarchy of colors. They were as weird as our modern day progressives, really) those people who still managed to make it to positions of learning and responsibility were stunning.

In the US? Well, when it was illegal to teach slaves to read we got some amazing minds expressing themselves fluently. (Frederic Douglass for instance.) And lest anyone forget Thomas Sowell managed to become who he is though born under and come to maturity under a highly discriminatory — against him — regime.

Women? Ah. Agatha Christie didn’t have the benefit of feminism. Jane Austen didn’t get doors opened to her or awards given her writing because “Wow, you have a vagina.” And they weren’t unique in their times and places. And pardon me, I am tired, but there are just as many examples of women scientists, it’s just I have trouble calling them to mind other than Ada Lovelace. And women entrepreneurs and–

Sure, those were a small proportion. And note I’m not saying we should discriminate against anyone, for any reason, not legally. (Human beings, individually tend to discriminate against a vast array of other individuals. It’s just what they do. You can’t stop it. It’s human. Fortunately, without government putting their thumbs on the scale, everyone is randomly discriminated against for some things, and it all comes out in the wash.)

However, I enjoin you to look at the history of the Jewish people, and note that no one has had more weaponized malice aimed at them throughout thousands of years. And yet there is still — among the mentally slow reaches of the internet — arguments about whether they’re a threat or a menace. And no one is offering them protection under “equity.” In fact, like most Asians (the only people — well, a subset of Asians put in camps in America in living memory) they are “White” for equity purposes, and only worthy of notice if they also have vaginas or like to bump uglies in interesting ways.

If you wanted to weaponize a minority of the population — say redheads — immediately pass laws actively discriminating against them. In a hundred years, we will all know that redheads are the smartest, most business capable, best scientists and general powerhouse worthy human beings ever to come down the pike. (NOTE I’m not suggesting this.)

Yes, sure, that method wastes a lot of individual human lives. A lot of them will give up or be broken at the inability to get anywhere. But at the end of it, they will paradoxically be on top.

Look at young men in America, right now. Kids, 40 and younger, they’ve been told their whole lives that they’re wrong for having a penis. Every show, every book, every news item lauds females as being heroes and wonderful, while men are natural-born oppressors by reason of existing. Their every impulse is wrong, their every instinct criminalized.

The breakage is evident, from young kids who want to be girls (I’ll remind you my close-to-thirty son wanted to be a girl at 4 because only girls got to have adventures. We had to sit down and talk about the difference between TV and reality, and well…. he never had that brilliant idea since.) to young men who are self-destroying and so depressed they can’t pull up.

But there is starting to be a counter to this. As official institutions of education go beyond discriminating for girls to discriminating against boys — and Biden’s insane EO is making this law at all levels — boys are…. going their own way, and not just in the sense of avoiding girls/women. They aren’t even doing that, really, though they take a longer time to find non-insane ones. Or at least non-anti-men ones.

Men are increasingly choosing not to go to college and starting their own companies, or getting trade certificates, or going to work as soon as possible, or–

Meanwhile women are lauded and encouraged to stay in the educational treadmill, even though they might be learning almost nothing (and getting maximum credit and praise for that little.)

Under the need to keep the paying customers in, colleges are becoming more and more useless, and turning out people who have no clue what they’re doing except for knowing they’re the best.

Meanwhile, the men who are sent to the wilderness are beating their head against walls to find a way. (And btw, those who make it through college are having to do the same in professional life after.)

If this is allowed to go on in 30 years, it will be known that the only reason women aren’t succeeding is because they were channeled into those decoy-organizations: colleges. While they were getting play-degrees like masters and doctorates, men got to control all of real life. REEEEE. Abolish colleges. Give women free trade certificates, and hand them their own, ready-built businesses. You can’t complain. That’s EQUITY.

Because I do believe in the broad equality of individuals (meaning that no, not everyone has the same interests, inclinations and aptitudes, but that given equality before the law everyone will find their own success and happiness, and it won’t be massively weighted for any group) and think that frankly white males don’t need to be given the advantage of being put through the crucible of oppression, I have a suggestion for true equity.

Abolish ALL government enforced discrimination, for, against, sideways, upsidedown. Abolish all handouts to groups of people for presumed past suffering. Avoid all “incentives” to groups of people for assumed past victimhood.

Take every individual as an individual, and treat them as equal before the law. Shame anyone in a position of authority who takes it upon herself or himself to discriminate for or against any class of people, whether real or imaginary (well, the purple-eyed three-footed giants had it coming, I’ll admit.)

Let humans be humans and figure themselves out. Yes, there will be some issues. No, we don’t all start out the same. True since at least the garden of Eden, or if you prefer Lucy’s tribe.

But in the end? the results won’t be equal, but they will indeed be equitable. In the sense that you put in the time, sweat and suffering to buy success. And lady luck gets a vote. And it all shakes out some way.

And if it doesn’t, the kids get another try at it. World without end.

At least there’s a good chance we’ll be getting the best of everyone, the best way we can.

And that in the end is good for society, for civilization, for humanity. And by and large better for individuals, too.

222 thoughts on “Liberte, Fraternite, Equity?”

          1. Pretty sure that’s not the ‘Liberty Way,’ unfortunately. Nor am I versed in the practice myself, beyond ‘Seal fruit/barley/honey in some container with yeast and leave it alone for a while.’ Which is probably drastically incorrect as it is.

            1. My understanding is that “sealing” is likely to make your container explosively decompress all over your pantry.

              Needs a vent until you’re done fermenting it.

  2. “…(well, the purple-eyed three-footed giants had it coming, I’ll admit.)”

    Those were flying purple people eaters, and we’re not all “too tough” for them to eat. So yes, they had it coming.

    1. It has never been adequately explained whether they were purple and flying and ate people, or if they were flying and ate purple people.

      3. Ah, but intense study of the lyrics gives us second hand testimony from pigeon toed, undergrowed, flying purple people eater:
        I said a mister purple people eater, what’s your line? He said it’s eating purple people and it sure is fine.

        Note that it is in his best interests to equivocate or even make a joke if his people eat human people, but he was not intending to eat the singer who asked the question.

                1. Wow. Thanks for pointing that out, I don’t think I’d noticed it before. Seriously, wow. There are three meaningful and bad ways those letters could be scrambled. (I’m not quite able to figure out any darker meaning for IDE, EDI, or EID.)

                  1. “Eid” is an Arabic term for a feast or reserved date, such as the Eid al Fitir and so on. But that’s a pretty limited usage.

                3. The order “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion” is alphabetical.

                  I’m not sure any of the people who suggest it are well-enough educated to recognize Latin, much less make subtle inferences about their assumed place in the grand scheme of things.

                  But it is an amusing spoiler alert conspiracy theory for those who are.

                  1. Based on what i’ve seen of current education I’m afraid you’re correct. In fact, I’d be surprised if many of them know that such a thing as “Latin” exists; they would probably think(?) that the terminal “o”, “a” or “x” was accidentally left off…

                    But it’s to fun to speculate. 🙂

      2. > “wondered if they were giant dwarves, or dwarf giants.”

        Miniature Giant Space Hamsters, anyone? 😛

  3. The left’s “solution” is akin to solving a forest’s problems by razing the forest.

    The left’s use of equity is simply a different way for them to say communist redistribution and they are simply recasting Marxist-Leninism in racial identity group terms rather than class. It has the same noxious tyrannical result of totalitarian control by a small elite cadre over the masses.

    1. There is unrest in the forest
      There is trouble with the trees
      For the Maples want more sunlight

      And the Oaks ignore their pleas

      Now there’s no more Oak oppression
      ‘Cause they passed a noble law
      And the trees are all kept equal
      By hatchet, axe, and saw

      — ‘The Trees’ from Rush’s 1978 album ‘Hemispheres’

    2. Now there’s no more Oak Oppression, because they passed a Noble Law.

      Now the Trees are all kept Equal, by hatchet, axe, and Saw.

      Rush

  4. In fact, it was probably the opposite of right and goes a long way towards explaining why France has remained a world power only in its own mind and why right now its greatest value is being parceled off willy nilly into retirement parcels for British and Germans.

    I have said since the German reunification that if they go on a war of conquest again, we should really punish them this time and make them keep France. 😉

    2. There was a joke going around on usenet about 30 years ago.
      Q. Where will the Germans put the capital of their newly-reunited nation?
      A. Paris

    3. The Reader thinks that the odd structure of the EU pretty much assures that they are keeping France.

    4. Or make the French keep Germany. The French actually have a somewhat competent military saddled with bad ROE and some bad top-brass decisions about what kind of hardware they should have. (IOW, not the kind of thing US Americans should be pointing fingers too hard about.) The Germans, meanwhile, have achieved military Italian-ness and are still digging.

      1. John Ringo has a character expressing that opinion in The Last Centurion, as I recall. Character opinions don’t always reflect the author’s opinions, as everyone should know, but in this particular case I think they do. The quote goes something like, “The French have really good troops and non-coms, it’s their officers and politicians who suck. Hoo boy, do they ever suck.”

        Might have been in a different book — maybe one of the Vorpal Blade series? I’m really not sure which book it was.

  6. No one is equal, I am supposedly the most privileged there is, a white Male. Not only that, I am 6′ 4″ and 250 lbs. I am told I am attractive, blondish hair, blue eyes ( But I self Identify as an Asian Lesbian lol) I can’t really fit in most cars and trying to find clothes, forgetaboutit.
    My daughter curses me every time she has to buy clothes, that is probably the sins of the father dumped on her. That is if genetics can be considered a sin. What is the point of all this whining? There is no normal, there is no equal, we all have our own pluses and minuses. (Just ask your TV Dad) And anything the liberals in both parties touch, turns to shit. The old saying is very true, The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Lucky for us they’re mandating electric cars so we’ll never make the complete trip to hell.

        1. The Reader notes from personal experience that white males with disabilities score no Victim Points. As to how he knows, ask his son.

        2. In Canada if you call it a disability you can get money. Also preferential hiring for government jobs, practically the only way a white male can get a government job these days.

          I “qualify”, but I decided I didn’t need the money that bad.

  7. Equity is a false god. It leads to the world of Harrison Bergeron.

    This is one of the main reasons I want to get out of America. Unfortunately the places I was interested in are involved in a war, err… Special Military Operation. The EU is rapidly degrading into political corruption, as was planned. Hungary might be an exception. Australia and New Zealand have become totalitarian states. Asia has its own issues. South American is an absolute no for me.

    3. As I’ve read, Orban is on the FICUS/WEF/Soros sh!tlist, and Susan Rice is over in Hungary drumming up support for a color revolution. Those who consider the 2014 Ukraine events a coup give Rice a good share of the credit/blame.

      Nowhere to run, I think we’re going to have to deal with things here. Sigh.

      1. Orban makes all of the right people upset. But our local Eastern European commenter over at Ace’s Blog has, iirc, mentioned in the past that Orban also has some extremely worrisome traits. In short, if it weren’t for the fact that the TPTB spend so much time villifying him, we probably wouldn’t be so keen on him. As it turns out, he’s probably doing more good than harm right now. But if things ever calmed down, he’s not the man you’d want running your country.

        Since we’re on the topic of France, I suppose a similar thing might be to ask whether you’d like Napoleon running your country. If you’re living through the Terror, then Napoleon is a breath of fresh air. But by our standards, he’d be an horrible person to have as your national leader.

        I suspect Orban is similar, though without the ability to successfully wage a series of continent-spanning wars that last for over a decade.

        1. Or the inclination. Alot of Napoleon’s problem was that he came to power through military adventurism and was not smart enough to find another way of staying in power.

          1. Hungary does have a ready-made war, though. There’s a long-standing dispute with Romania over a large chunk of territory. The region in question is large enough to represent a big chunk of Romania, and Romania’s quite a bit larger than Hungary. Or in other words, it’s not just a few miles along the border. The claim has been abandoned by Hungary. But claim abandonments only stay abandoned until they’re useful as a way to whip up national sentiment.

            Once NATO is out of the way, then sooner or later a Hungarian leader will start talking about it again.

        1. Actually, I have it on fairly good authority that food in the camps Waaay Down Under is really good. It has to be, as it is one of the only attractions of that sort of existence. Kind of like my experience of the longest year of my life: one summer enduredjoyed in Deadhorse, Alaska, on the sunny shores of the Beaufort Sea* of the Arctic Ocean.

          *Named after the fellow (quite a polymath, actually) who regularized the wind force scale.

      2. I’m not sure about that. The people of Belarus understand that their totalitarian government is due to election fraud. Unlike the majority of Americans.

          1. I know. But it is still an extremely safe country. I have a friend who left his cellphone in a taxi. His next trip, the police returned it to him. I’ve been to Ukraine multiple times and I feel much safer walking the streets late at night there than I do here in The People’s Democratic Socialist Republic of Austin. The US is in far worse shape than most people realize.

              1. I think Austin is still safer than most big cities, which isn’t saying a lot. I would like to find some medium sized town to move to, I’m just kind of clueless about how I’m going to find one.

                2. I’m still getting used to not needing to lock my house or car doors out in rural panhandle Florida. Moved down just before the bug hit. The little apartment I lived in in the town 3 miles away was a bad neighborhood though, so there can be problems even in small towns. That said, we allowed more leeway in solving those problems. Permanently if necessary.

                  1. This!

                    Flyover Falls is small enough that it’s avoided the worst of the problems, and we don’t have a Soros DA at the county level. Police and the Sheriff are mostly OK, though there’s word that TPTB are doing whatever they can to keep the illegal MJ grow operations away from the city, and “sucks to be you” for the rural areas.

                    OTOH, I have to go over the Cascades twice per year, and that’s getting a bit interesting.
                    If things get sporty, one trip has been a Costco stockup and could be sacrificed, while the other combines the stockup with a medical visit. The precise medical specialty isn’t done over here, but if it got too weird, I could get a partial checkup locally. (Oddball retinal issue, and Medford has a slew of eye specialists and regular docs, while F-Falls tends to run more basic.)

                    2. We tried Costco in Bend twice. Not a fun drive (US 97 gets insane drivers), and at the time, no Costco gas station. The obvious choice at the highway intersection refused to take debit cards (circa ’03-4), and the store wasn’t very large. Traffic in town was interesting. At one time, we were also getting stuff at other Westside stores, including Ashland. That’s not a factor now, but ’97 is still spooky unless somebody turns it into a freeway. Not in my lifetime.

                      Deschutes county seems to be a blue county in a sea of red ones. If the Greater Idaho movement is more than a pipedream, I’d be unsurprised (and happy) if they stayed with Salem.

                      The Central Point Costco is only 5 years old, huge, and has what we need. I’ve been doing overnight stays because my body says no long trips. 105 miles each way over the Cascades. Bend is a bit further (though no mountains), and we’re not set up to take Kat the dog with us, so $SPOUSE stays home while I do the run. Right now, I’m keeping my head on a swivel in Medford Metro, and the Forester isn’t obviously worth it for troublemakers.

                    3. Oh good heavens you were in Bend between about 2000 and 2006? And driving?

                      You have my deepest sympathies…. (also empathy!)

                      That stupid up in the air road/bypass thing they put in helped stuff a LOT, as did the nice, big, wide road that goes past the Costco where they got the space while it was on the edge of town. (As opposed to “way outside of town, why did they build it so far out?” like it was not too long before that..)

                    4. tried Costco in Bend twice. Not a fun drive (US 97 gets insane drivers)
                      ,,,,

                      The long haul truckers use it when the destination is south of Shasta, and no stops along I-5 south, so they take hwy 58 east to head south on hwy 97. Allows them to avoid the many passes between Cottage Grove to Weed. They do not take it slow.

                      We “go” to Bend. Take the exit past Pilot Butte (stopping at the corner gas station), to head to Burns and Ontario (cuts major state corner to Idaho border). Last time we were on hwy 99 was because we couldn’t take Hwy 126 home Fall 2020, so had to take hwy 97 to the cutoff to hwy 58. Otherwise we haven’t maneuvered Bend proper since Fall ’88 when we helped moved MIL from Bend to Portland to live with her oldest daughter.

                  1. Also, FYI abroad you might be on the tourist exemption. Porto is very safe downtown with my kids and husband acting American and speaking English. We could drop a hundred dollar bill and someone would return it.
                    COMPLETELY different out with my birth family. You will get your throat cut for two bucks.
                    The reason? The law just about lands with a ton of bricks on anyone even looking crosseyed at a tourist. Tourists are their main revenue, so….
                    Moving there is not the solution a lot of Americans have tried to find. They usually move back within the year.

                    1. It’s the same with downtown San Antonio and the Riverwalk – the lifeblood of San Antonio, besides being military city, is the tourism industry. No lowlife is allowed to harass or threaten tourists, around the Alamo, or the Riverwalk.
                      Sometimes my daughter and I have struck up a conversation with tourists who wanted the skinny on some non-tourist restaurant or attraction a little way distant and we’ve reluctantly told them that unless you really know where you are going … not after dark and on foot.

                  2. That is the reason I would like to stay within 100 miles of Austin. I still have a number of follow up visits for the aftermarket parts in my chest, missing parts in my chest & a stroke.

                6. Throw a dart at a map.

                  Decide what kind of church you want to go to and move to place that has one.

                  Get a different job that will force you to move elsewhere.

                  Make a list of cities whose name you like and roll a die.

                  If “move to a medium city” is your only criteria, it doesn’t matter how you choose, only that you do.

                  1. It is far from my only criteria, but “medium sized town” is probably the most effective first filter. Church doesn’t matter, two semesters in seminary taught me they they all have lost their way. I’m a sysadmin, so work would almost certainly be remote. With skynet, ummm, StarLink, connectivity should not be a big issue. Ideally, I would wind up somewhere that doesn’t require me to drive every day, so along the main street, town square, etc.

            2. Does Austin have a Soros sock-puppet D.A.? It’s run by Democrats; are they supporting the police, or the feral homeless? Are they setting looters and murderers free without bail? Is Austin a ‘sanctuary city’ that allows illegal aliens to ignore the laws?

              All of these things matter.
              ———————————
              The Democrats trust violent criminals and terrorists with guns more than they trust you.

              1. You are absolutely correct, unfortunately other large cities in the US have the same problems. I remember walking in the city centers of Kiev & Kherson after midnight and felt quite safe. Of course, Ukraine does not have a diverse culture…

                1. As has been noted elsewhere on the Net, if you are in a big city and can get out, do so. Time is short. As to the desire for order, the Reader notes that Spain in the 60s was the most ‘orderly’ place he has ever been to, but as the people who survived the Spanish Civil War passed, the desire for more than order was quietly expressing itself. The Reader (at age 11) was constantly questioned about the US by both kids and adults. Order is not the end point of humanity.

                  1. All I’m going to say is that the residents of East Palestine OH probably felt they had moved away from big city problems. Then a train rolled into town……

                2. I would rather live among free and rough Americans, than the orderly serfs of Europe.

                  Their best came here. What is left there self-selected for obedience and ruin.

                  There are occasional flickers of rebellious hope, still.

              2. And all of them are true, although some of these (the DA, for ex) are at Travis County level rather than Austin proper.

                  1. As a volunteer deputy registrar in Travis County, I’ve actually had the opportunity to talk to Bruce Elfant about some of the problems with cleaning up voter roles. The short description is that given the distributed nature of voter registration across 3000+ counties in the US makes detecting when someone moves quite a challenge. Including when someone moves to a nursing home and then dies there without updating their voter registration.

        2. Matt, this is demonstrably wrong. Poll after poll shows that even a majority of Democrats think there was something wrong with 2020.

          What most Americans haven’t fully processed is that a) a thoroughly corrupted legal system can’t fix it, and b) taking that to its’ logical conclusion of what will be required to correct it.

          Because they also haven’t processed that there’s really nowhere to run from the ruin. East Palestine should be a warning.

    5. What is this fascination some people have with finding the most turd world spot on the planet they can locate that has good PR and pretending like it is civilized?

      There is no civilization outside of America. And there hasn’t been for 250 years.

      1. There is civilization outside America (Japan, Taiwan, and Switzerland aren’t exactly blood-drenched hells), but there aren’t any civilizations outside America that have anything to do with American liberty.

  8. Equity is not equality, but it sounds like it. Leftists are all about using words that people think mean something good but always mean the opposite. Back in the 40’s and 50’s of the last century, there was one politician who campaigned against his opponent, whose wife he noted was a “known thespian”. Sounded close enough to something folks back then didn’t like.

    EQUALITY is, as Sarah notes, equal rights before the law. EQUITY means taking from those who earned it and giving it to those who didn’t. That’s the direct opposite of equality. But “equity” only a few letters different from “equality”, so most folks think that’s what it is.

    “Affirmative Action” is actually racial discrimination. But it sounds like you’re doing something good, and positive, yeah, “affirmative” is positive, right? And “action” is something you should do, right?

    Yes, I could go on…but we all know these things.

  9. In mathematics, both Kovalevsky and Noether did notable work long before anyone had thought of the phrase “affirmative action.” And all the way back in the ancient world there was Hypatia.

    1. The irony is that they have to erase the successes so their agenda looks like meaningful progress.

    2. And various other folks. And it was fairly well known and recognized that a lot of mathematicians and scientists and such were married to their research assistants and scribes. It’s only in the modern era that people insist that such folks need separate recognition because reasons.

    3. In fairness though, Kovalevskya had to go through a sham marriage to be able to go abroad and continue her studies. So I would not minimize the things that women had to go through back in the day. The same is true for lots of brilliant women who had to have a man step up and help them break through. Even in the late 1970s , my wife had to deal with a lot of crap as a woman chemist.

      Now of course, we have the exact opposite extreme in our educational system.

  10. It may SEEM like the girls are getting a better shake but in reality, they are being beaten down too. Oh sure, they are handed awards and higher grades but the very clear point is that girls are inferior in and of themselves and they are only worthy if they are the exact same as men. If you want to just be a girl or think the best thing is to get married and have a family to take care of you are letting down the sisterhood and allowing the patriarchy to win. And guys are chumps to think some girl won’t take them to the cleaners if he spends his life supporting the family. Children are a burden and a block to realizing your full potential.

    No one at all is being Positioned for Success these days. The are being Positioned to envy, hate, and denigrate each other. The idea that males or females would devote their lives and talents to raise up the next generation is being drummed out of all of them to the detriment of us all.

    It is very sad.

    2. About half the girls these days are being stricken with anxiety disorder. It’s fashionable, you see.

      Also fashionable to profess non-standard gender affiliation, which is how we get to 75 popular genders. People make them up as recreation. Part of the fun is demanding the people around you take part in the cosplay.

      Unfortunately, genuine anxiety disorders really are -way- up in the teen girl population. Even assuming half the reported cases are fashion-related, the number remaining is still of great concern.

      They don’t see a future for themselves, is what I think.

      My Boomer generation was going to Save The World!, that’s what we all thought. The future was bright. Well, except for the Cold War. That wasn’t so great, but we were going to fix it, and at least it was an Enemy Government making life hard for us. Our government was here to help. Right? Walter Cronkite said.

      These days? Our government was installed by the Communist Chinese, and you can tell by the way they act. No wonder little girls are anxious.

      So on the one hand, yes absolutely schools are 100% designed to cater to girls, now more than ever. Always have been, but the last eight years or so they’ve stopped pretending to even accept the boys.

      But on the other hand, all that means is more attention to indoctrinating the girls with Leftist beliefs and making them act like good little Leftists. Problem being the beliefs are insane, and the kids KNOW IT, so the friction between being a good girl and doing what teacher said and “NO I’M NOT DOING THAT! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!!!” is breaking a lot of kids down.

      Like drag queen story hour. The question is not do your kids want to see the drag show. They don’t, its weird and boring. Like clowns, but so much worse.

      The real question is why do so many Leftists suddenly have an interest in drag queens performing for your children?

      1. Day Job had a session for female students pointing out that there is NOTHING contradictory between asking for tutoring or other help, and being a strong and independent woman. Knowing that you need help and getting IS a sign of strength. The surprised expressions on some of the young ladies’ faces . . . SIGH.

        1. What a concept.

          Sad that employers should have to teach such basic life lessons these days, but I suppose we should be grateful that at least SOMEONE still is.

          1. Education can be considered successful if it gets through before you get a degree from Hard Knocks U. Or the Gods of the Copybook Headings

      2. Unfortunately, genuine anxiety disorders really are -way- up in the teen girl population. Even assuming half the reported cases are fashion-related, the number remaining is still of great concern.

        They’re locked in with their abusers, told how happy they are supposed to be when they’re graciously allowed to serve the desires of those abusers, are kept dependent on those abusers, and know that they’ll be tossed aside without a moment’s hesitation if they upset the wrong person.

        Why the heck wouldn’t that make someone neurotic as heck!?

  11. The French Revolution, if I remember the research I did once upon a time, was as close to a “successful” (for values of “successful”) slave revolt as you could think of.

    And it was far too inspiring to far too many overgrown emo teenagers (I swear that if you scratch a socialist/Communist/Fascist hard enough, you’ll find someone that has never outgrown their emo teenager phase and thinks that just because they whine enough and throw a big enough temper tantrum, they’ll get what they want) to try the same thing again and again.

    They hate the American Revolution because it was a revolution of adults, perhaps one of the few ones to have ever happened. It wasn’t perfect, and there were things that had to be fixed (i.e. the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution, and the eventual end of slavery).

    And nobody wants to be an adult…

    1. The Founding Fathers had the advantages of stable colonial legislatures. They KNEW how to govern themselves, they’d been doing it for 120 years or so. Which was why they got snippy when the British Parliment tried to trespass on our prerogatives.

      1. Nod, we weren’t replacing our government with a new government.

        We were thirteen governments joining forces against the British government.

        1. Which makes me wonder if there is a practical AU where Parliament could have figured out how to allow their American cousins some kind of authority that would deal with the whole “taxation without representation” thing.

          1. Parliament was unhappy they had to let non-Londoners in. Colonials might as well be foreigners, and what kind of government would that be?!

            During WWII Churchill proposed allowing the Commonwealth countries to sit non-voting members in Parliament. That got exactly zero traction.

              1. That’s my understanding. As I gather, Britain was so riddled with rotten boroughs, fixing representation would have likely blown Parliament to smithereens.

            2. “Parliament was unhappy they had to let non-Londoners in. Colonials might as well be foreigners, and what kind of government would that be?!?”

              …one that might still have a lot of money in the coffers?

              1. Like the old optimist/pessimist glass joke, a government with money left attracts those who feel they haven’t spent enough. And the rest of us think the taxes were too high.

                1. And this is why Keynesian Economics doesn’t work. Even though Keynes said that in better times money should be set aside/invested and the surpluses kept in reserve for bad times… well, politicians have Selective Hearing and only heard “We can spend and spend and spend.” And… well, look around. tick…tick…tick..tick

            3. Pretty much this. None of the British colonies anywhere in the world had been allowed representation in Parliament up until that point. Parliament wasn’t going to change that for any reason. But the Thirteen Colonies were growing too rapidly (IIRC, I’ve seen it mentioned that by 1820, New York City was the largest English-speaking city in the world), and given the population ratios involved, it was absurd to think that the Colonies would have allowed themselves to continue on without some sort of Parliamentary representation.

              1. They didn’t want Parliamentary representation where they could be outvoted, they wanted their own legislatures.

                1. They could have their own local legislatures to handle their local affairs, but they were going to be subject to Parliament regardless. Parliament controlled the British Empire. The Colonies weren’t going to get an exception. It might have been possible to get them seats in Parliament. But there was no way that they were going to get the right to be completely independent of Parliament. Since Parliament effectively was the government by that point, allowing the colonies to act under their own authority and not Parliament’s would have effectively made them fully independent in all but name. And the “No Taxation Without Representation” rallying cry was essentially asking for representation in Parliament. Granting them seats in Parliament would have exactly fulfilled the request in that statement.

                  1. If Britain had decided to grant the colonies seats in Parliament, they first would have had to grant all of the areas in the home islands the same. At the time of the American Revolution, a large number of Britons had no representation in Parliament; it was an exclusive club. And George III had half of Parliament in his pocket, bought and paid for. The aftermath of the Revolution triggered a slow movement toward a more representative government in Britain (by American standards painfully slow but still movement).

                    2. Agreed that the Colonies weren’t going to get seats in Parliament. But that’s still more likely than granting the Colonies what would have effectively been full independence.

                  2. Nope. They admitted that Parliament governed outside their borders, and Parliament could have gone on saying send us money and left it to the assemblies to lay the taxes.

                    1. Parliament eventually would have demanded more taxes than the Colonists were willing to pay. So you’d end up back at square one.

                      Besides, even though the Colonists might have been outnumbered in Parliament, that didn’t mean that they wouldn’t have had power. The House of Commons was (and still is) a legislature where it’s very important to have a majority. While the Colonies still would have been in a minority, they likely still would have been a block. And minority blocks need to be courted, as can be seen in the Israeli Knesset.

                    3. No, but as I’ve already pointed out, a Parliamentary voting block means that they would have been able to bargain.

      2. The United States had an effective and acknowledged government. This is a real problem when trying to win the people back. . . .

        Until very lately all authority in America seemed to be nothing but an emanation from yours. Even, the popular part of the Colony Constitution derived all its activity and its first vital movement from the pleasure of the Crown. We thought, Sir, that the utmost which the discontented Colonies could do was to disturb authority; we never dreamt they could of themselves supply it—knowing in general what an operose business it is to establish a government absolutely new. But having, for our purposes in this contention, resolved that none but an obedient Assembly should sit, the humors of the people there, finding all passage through the legal channel stopped, with great violence broke out another way. Some provinces have tried their experiment, as we have tried ours; and theirs has succeeded. They have formed a government sufficient for its purposes, without the bustle of a revolution or the formality of an election. Evident necessity and tacit consent have done the business in an instant. So well they have done it, that Lord Dunmore—the account is among the fragments on your table—tells you that the new institution is infinitely better obeyed than the ancient government ever was in its most fortunate periods. Obedience is what makes government, and not the names by which it is called; not the name of Governor, as formerly, or Committee, as at present. This new government has originated directly from the people, and was not transmitted through any of the ordinary artificial media of a positive constitution. It was not a manufacture ready formed, and transmitted to them in that condition from England. The evil arising from hence is this; that the Colonists having once found the possibility of enjoying the advantages of order in the midst of a struggle for liberty, such struggles will not henceforward seem so terrible to the settled and sober part of mankind as they had appeared before the trial.

        1. “Obedience is what makes government, and not the names by which it is called; not the name of Governor, as formerly, or Committee, as at present.”

          And there’s a whole lot of Americans who are fed up and tired of obeying their lessers on high.

  13. I think what most of this comes down to is hatred of the working classes, Now that we’re all rich there’s really nothing material to distinguish the U from the Non-U. So they’ve moved from luxury goods to luxury beliefs — Rob Henderson defines these as beliefs that confer status on the upper classes and inflict costs on the lower classes. In the same way, having pronouns is a socially acceptable way to say yes, I did go to a Harvard,

  14. The problem is that the Left hasn’t realized that in some fields, there is a Final Exam. And it’s not a Pass/Fail grade…it’s a Live/Die grade. Possibly taking a lot of people with you.

    Privilege? For most of my childhood, my father drove a Coca-Cola truck. Mom drove a school bus. All I had was my wits, and grim determination.

  15. Seeing how swiftly and directly ” Liberte, Egalite Fraternite” turned into the Terror as the ruling faction brought out the guillotine for those who were insufficiently revolutionary, revolutionary, I wonder how long it will take for the Woke to turn autocannibal.

    1. Funny, it worked much the same in Russia, Cuba, China, North Korea, and Cambodia.

      The Vietnamese managed to partially avoid it as they got snarled up in Pol Pot’s “Year Zero” and sent troops, technicians, food, and other aid to Cambodia. They were too short of manpower to make much effort cull the ideologically unclean if they were otherwise useful.

      1. The long war to reunite the country might have also had something to do with that in Vietnam. The North needed troops to fight against the Imperialists in the South. By the time that was no longer the case, things had been settled into place for some time.

        The South still got reeducation camps, though.

        1. For a moment the Reader thought that your comment was about the US post Civil War…

      2. I have a vague memory that the Viet Cong personnel were shunted aside by the North after the fall of Saigon. I’d assume they’d have been up against the wall without Pol Pot.

        “Nice work, comrade. Now get out of our way.”

        1. Well, from what I remember reading, the rank & file of the Viet Cong were almost destroyed in the Tet Offensive.

          Thus they weren’t a factor when it came to North Vietnam invading the South.

          1. Yeah, my memory is vague, and it’s one of the areas where my history reading is deficient. The draft was over by the time I got my BS, but it’s still an uneasy subject.

            I think your memory is correct; Jerry Pournelle mentioned that the North invasion of the South was one of the biggest tank operations around, if memory serves, even by WW 2 standards. Ten divisions, maybe?

            So yeah, no rank & file VC to participate. Not sure about the officers. I wonder if they were the ones shunted aside.

            Side note: Can anybody recommend an honest (ish) history of the Vietnam war? I think it’s time to learn.

            1. PBS had a 20+ (I think?) episode documentary series back in the early ’80s about the Vietnam War. AFAIK, that one (at least at the time) was generally considered decent, unlike the ones that came later.

              The VC was effectively wiped out as an effective fighting force in the 1968 Tet Offensive. The North had horribly miscalculated, and thought that they could win with one big push. Instead, they failed miserably and it cost them pretty much the entirety of their local forces (i.e. the VC). Troops from the North had always been present in the South, but up until then they’d been supplemented by the local forces. After the Tet Offensive, the troops from the North conducted all of the fighting.
              .
              Unfortunately, the US public saw the sudden surge in fighting strength by an enemy that they thought was being beaten, and took it as an indication that the war could never be won. The fact that it was a suicidal surge in strength was lost on the public.

              1. I do recall that Walter Cronkite was at the forefront of the lying media who proclaimed that the Tet Offensive was “proof that the US would never win the war”. That suicidal surge wasn’t so much lost on the public, but it was thoroughly hidden by the MSM.

                The MSM tactics haven’t changed that much, but now that there’s competition, those who want to look can get an indication of reality. Which really ticks off those running the Narrative.

              2. The documentary series I referred to might be “Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War”.

                https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0174323/

                It was originally created for CBC in Canada, and then aired on PBS in the US in the early ’80s. It was probably the first major attempt in the Western Hemisphere to examine the war as a whole. It covered from the end of World War 2 through the French defeat to the fall of Saigon. It’s long for a television documentary, but even a half-way decent look at the subject material requires that much time.

            2. Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954–1965 and Triumph Regained: The Vietnam War, 1965-1968 by Mark Moyar cover the war though 1968. He is working on the third volume although I couldn’t find an estimated release date. The Reader is part way through the first volume and is impressed.

              1. Thanks!

                Both are available on Amazon, though the TradPub pricing model for the first volume makes it, er, interesting. $31 or so for the hard cover sounds not too horrible, but $29.79 to buy the eBook? YGTBSM! Then there’s the $13.64 option where I can rent the book. That makes investigating the county library system a much better option.

                Curiously, the second volume is $8.99 on the Kindle. That won’t break my reading budget. I’ll see about volume 1 after I’ve gone through the second.

                1. You are welcome. The Reader noticed the odd Kindle pricing on the first volume. It wasn’t that way when it was released.

                  1. The Reader just noticed the publishers. Volume 1 was published by Cambridge Press in 2009. Volume II by Encounter Books. I’d guess that the author had some issues with his first publisher.

                    1. “Has” some issues with his first publisher, since I suspect that the only reason he didn’t have Encounter publish Vol 1 is that Cambridge won’t let go of it, and Cambridge has jacked the price of Vol 1 in retaliation. After all, if no one buys Vol 1, why would they buy Vol 2?

                    2. Well, Volume 2 is now in my Kindle, and Cambridge isn’t going to see any money from me. I’ll read what’s on the Kindle, and when I have some time I will see if I can get Volume 1 from the library.

    3. The Left here has already been doing that. Look at Gabbard as an example. Or look at The Squad going after some of their fellow Democrats (including Pelosi). Some on the Left have been trying to apply the brakes. Greenwald, Taibi, and Maher all come to mind in this regard, and as a result quite a few lefties these days will tell you with a straight face that Greenwald is a conservative (I don’t think they’ve started coming for Maher yet).

  16. Sarah,

    I’ve created a new protonmail account and just sent an email entitled “E-mail test” to both your hotmail and scifi accounts from it. They have a small .rtf file attached with an image and a small bit of sample text. Let me know if you see either copy.

    I also need an invite to the Discord so I can see if my new account there will let me PM you.

  17. Side thought on the government incompetents; One doesn’t need a tinfoil hat to suspect, believe attest they, be they Buck Fidens, Occasional Cortexes, or luggage stealing dumb duckers don’t run, haven’t ran the government machine for decades, perhaps close to a century. The swamp creatures two or three levels down not only keep the gears greased but far more often than not decide which levers to pull, which trouble light needs attention and how many derailments are an acceptable loss.

    I don’t see how we can drain the swamp until we get a ‘THE BUCK STOPS HERE’ plaque on each and every elected official’s desk, and, hold them to it!

  18. Look at Clarence Thomas, raised dirt poor in South Carolina by his grandfather, arguably now the best mind on the Supreme Court, perhaps the best in the last 100 years…Giving stuff to struggling people, except when you are giving them tools to improve themselves, is likely to harm them..And they are only proud when THEY do it, they’re not proud or happy when you give meaningless awards to them…So I teach them to do it…

  19. :does an irrational happy-dance that spell chuck screwed up Sarah’s writing villein, too:

    No, you tin-plated booby! I don’t mean my character is a BAD GUY, I mean he’s got a Lord!

    1. But what if the Lord he works for is a bad guy assigning sinister tasks to him? He might be a villein villain!

  21. We are all descended from slaves. And from slave owners.

    Slavery has been universal throughout the world for the last 300,000 years. There is no branch, twig or leaf of the human family tree untainted by slavery. Determining who owes ‘reparations’ to who would be an impossible task.

    Slavery was legal in parts of the United States for 72 years. That’s deplorable. It was the price for getting the southern states on board with the Revolutionary War. Without their support, there wouldn’t be a United States. The British would have crushed the Revolution.

    Once we gained our independence, America was at or near the forefront of efforts to abolish slavery, both here and around the world.
    ———————————
    There is no shortage of people convinced they can create the Perfect World. They just have to eliminate all those imperfect people who don’t fit in it.

  22. Ok, I’m going to tap dance on the landmine.
    (Mainly because I’m still pissed off at being called “anti-Semitic” for saying the search and seizure in Mar a Lago was a flagrant abuse of power. Evidently, everybody at every level of the decision making process was Jewish. I hadn’t known that. The possibility hadn’t even occurred to me. I mean, seriously, what are the fricking odds? But the same pattern appears frequently once you look for it.)

    There is a fundamental disconnect.
    Jews are culturally (and religiously, but the more religious members have obligations that tend to mitigate the impact) tribal. Existing within a high trust society which largely hasn’t been.
    This gives them a comparative advantage, and results in a concentration of power over time, to the detriment of the larger society. (This also may apply to Han Chinese, Immigrants from India, and sundry other ethnic groups. They’ve just had less time and opportunity to work the system.)

    And I’m not at all sure what can be done about it.

    Obviously, a race to the lowest common denominator is destructive to everyone.
    Freedom of association is fundamental, and cannot be jettisoned.
    Some degree of nepotism is implicit in human nature, and it takes a lot of cultural capital to minimize it. Self-dealing tribalism is extremely corrosive to this pursuit.

    I don’t see any good answers.
    And hanging above everything, is the bad answer that’s been repeating for millennia.
    The Jews collectively fear progroms, and for bloody good reason. But trying to accrete money, power, and above all control to your small ethnic group to prevent a progrom, makes a progrom inevitable. It’s a self-licking ice cream cone of shortsightedness and recriminations.
    And bugger if I can think of a way to stop it.
    I don’t even know if it can be stopped. (A whole mess of headlines from the past few months may well indicate enough momentum to travel past the tipping point.)
    But to anybody who might be able to influence this in any small way, from any angle…
    Could we just not follow this well-trod path? It won’t end well for anybody.

    1. Depends. How well do you know they were “all Jewish” and how Jewish are they? Are we just dealing with a group originating in NYC.
      Please don’t guy this bullshit wholesale. I don’t have time to do a deep dive, but every time I see this nonsense, it’s exactly that, bullshit.

    3. Jews are culturally (and religiously, but the more religious members have obligations that tend to mitigate the impact) tribal. Existing within a high trust society which largely hasn’t been.

      Hasn’t been true for a long time, at the very least in the US. Traditionally observant Jews are more likely to hang out with practicing Catholics, for example– and they will have an advantage, but that’s because the largely shared philosophy is good in the long run, not because of favoritism. (You’ll find them in various unpopular pro-life groups, including those offering facts on fetal cell lines, along with the occasional idealistic atheist who actually thinks killing humans for profit or advantage is a bad idea, even when it’s easy.)

      Which makes sense, since the shared philosophy is literally the source of the idea that favoring someone because of who they are rather than what what they do is bad.

      The idiots that accused you of being an anti-semite for opposing the MAL raid were just idiots throwing out something they thought would hurt to distract from facts or logic.

      They are also the idiots who try to push that actual practicing members of strongly legalistic philosophies showing up outside of the statistically random measurement indicates some kind of plot.
      Rather than, oh, a culture that focuses on that.

      Usually comes up when the Supreme Court or some similar group does their job, and they have to blame joooz or papists or race-traitors or brainwashed women (you know they’re brain washed because they aren’t in lockstep!) rather than their case sucking.

      There are folks who have been behaving in anti-Semitic manners.

      Check out New York with the kung flu for examples; from memory, they’ve lost a couple of lawsuits over it.

      There’s a lot of folks who really want to force those Jewish groups (and related philosophies of inherent human worth) who don’t want to use vaccines grown in the remains of deliberately killed humans to engage in what they view as morally equivalent to casual cannibalism.

      1. Isn’t it funny how the Supreme Court is ‘imposing fascism’ by ruling that the federal government does not have the authority to do this or that? It’s like they don’t know the meanings of the words they use. Oh, wait…

          1. “You don’t like the Goths?”
            “No! Not with the persecution we have to put up with!”
            “Persecution?”
            “Religious persecution. We won’t stand for it forever.”
            “I thought the Goths let everybody worship as they pleased.”
            “That’s just it! We Orthodox are forced to stand around and watch Arians and Monophysites and Nestorians and Jews going about their business unmolested, as if they owned the country. If that isn’t persecution, I’d like to know what is!”
            ― L. Sprague De Camp, Lest Darkness Fall

            1. There’s an exchange in Poul Anderson’s “A Midsummer Tempest” that went something like this (very loosely paraphrased because it’s been an eon):
              “What’s the problem with France? They don’t forbid protestants from worshiping as they please..”
              “The problem, my dear, is that they do allow Catholics.”

              Very loosely paraphrased, but that was the gist.

        4. The people calling the USSC fascist are the same ones who believe that asking them to define fascism is something that only fascists do.

      2. Well, the ADL has come out and said that “It’s Okay To Be White” is hate speech. So, they have declared themselves my enemy by saying that it is not okay to be what I am. And they are not the only ones of that group who have expressed that sentiment.

        1. So?

          Someone said a stupid thing, so you are going to jump in and follow it with both feet? WHY?!

          The only “group” that the ADL legitimately represent the views of is a specific stream of the left wing activism, quite skilled at finding something that sounds good and riding it to death in pursuit of whatever is shiny today.

          Actions, not ancestry.

          If you want to join them in tearing down that framework, then you make yourself an enemy of me– and of all good people who reject the evil of acting as if whatever group they stick a label on you for owns you, determines your views, and is better able to speak for you than you, yourself.

          You don’t like some idiots declaring, on behalf of a group they supposedly defend, that you’re a racist?
          THEN STOP GIVING THEM POWER BY AGREEING WITH THEM THAT THEY ARE SOMEHOW LEGITIMATE.

          And if you’re about to say “oh but the people they say they represent don’t reject them,” shove it up your rump, sideways. That BS was worn and old decades ago with various self-declared representing women’s groups, and I can’t help but notice that it’s an invincible argument; no amount of people saying “no, they don’t speak for me, and why the heck do you keep insisting they do, especially when I’ve never said anything like that?” — even founding entire organizations that are opposed to them– is enough to dent it.

          YOU have to reject the thieves. We can’t make it so the power-hungry never stand up and declare themselves spokesmen for a group on the flimsiest of excuses, and I see no reason why I should be having to GIVE you reasons to not accept their demands.
          At least Emperor Norton was amusing.

        2. My emotional response to those who object to “It’s OK To Be White” on the basis that real white supremacists agree with it, is on the order of “Go soak your pointy little head.” I’m old enough to remember “Black is beautiful”. You see, I don’t think it boots anything to go a-quarreling with the dead hand of past slavery and colonialism. What I can do is, going forward, try treat everyone as I would like to be treated, regardless of the melanin content of their epidermis.

    4. to the detriment of the larger society

      [citation needed]

      You literally just claimed a few words before that that they were inherently superior to the society they are in.

      Would that every society could have within it a hyper-productive and trustworthy cadre driven to make the best use of their skills.

      1. I’m reminded that Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is an account of a hyper-productive and trustworthy cadre deciding they’ve had enough abuse and withdrawing their services. Of course Rand herself was Jewish, by parentage if not by belief. (Consider the incident where she was asked to define her philosophy while standing on one foot . . .)

      2. In fairness to a stupid argument, I didn’t read him as saying they were inherently superior, merely at an advantage via in-group preference in a high trust society.

        In-group preference occurs to various degrees in all human groups, but I don’t think it’s anywhere near a universal advantage, maybe not even an advantage on net. Is ‘insular’ typically used to describe world-conquering empires? Need we fear the accumulating power of the Amish?

  23. You know those moments you wonder why you didn’t think of something? Why you never realized what seems so bloody obvious after it’s pointed out to you?

    I’m having one of those moments.

    Thank you!

      1. Let me try another way:

        This is a fantastic post. I hadn’t considered your key points before, and now I can’t unsee them because they’re so blindingly obvious. I suppose I could rummage around the darkening corners of my mind for a different framing of the same idea, but the point about government discrimination driving excellence among the discriminated was just a different (to me), but effective phrasing.

        And pointing out that a marketplace of individuals is a far more just and efficient means of driving excellence was an excellent way to tie it to the ideals that many of us here appreciate.

        Thank you!

        1. I’d differ, though. Discrimination and oppression do not ‘drive excellence’, they merely ensure that only the most exceptional people can succeed at all. This at the expense of the great majority, who could achieve modest success if treated fairly. It’s a senseless squandering of human potential and an imposition of near-universal misery.
          ———————————
          I oppose every form of supremacy. All efforts to promote any one group or category of American citizens above another is evil. Such measures can only create injustice, not remedy it.

          1. We’ll have to agree to disagree about driving excellence. There are some personalities that are motivated by discrimination or oppression. You can read the autobiographies of some of the examples Sarah mentioned. That doesn’t mean it’s a just or efficient means of promoting excellence, as Sarah pointed out, and I echoed.

  24. Look at it this way: If one person isn’t important, how can [some arbitrary number] of people be important? That is the fatal flaw in group identity politics. Either we’re all important, or nobody is.

    As we can see from what the ‘progressives’ are doing, people are not important. They are obsessed with their various Perfect Worlds, and determined to purge all the Imperfect People who don’t fit in them.

    In a story I’m writing, after watching the movie ‘Soldier’ the main character has a nightmare about the planet she was supposed to infiltrate. A world where every person was raised and trained from birth for one specific job and taught nothing else. Those failing to meet the requirements were culled. Eventually even the Elites supposedly running the show became trapped in their rigid roles, going through the motions of wielding absolute power but in reality constrained to do exactly what the System required to maintain the status quo.

    She wakes up in tears and declares, “Wiping them all out with a planet-killer would be an act of mercy!”

    That’s where the dreams of the ‘progressives’ would lead. An imitation of Camazotz without even the pretense of amusement.
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    “Isn’t it strange, G’Kar? When we first met I had no power and all the choices I could ever want. And now I have all the power I could ever want and no choices at all. No choice at all.”

  25. Hate to say it everyone, but the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are going whole hog forcing all healthcare providers to do the DIE dance. American medical practice is going to break over this.

    1. It’s just so un-diverse to have the best medical care in the world that they just have to make it like everyone’s, even though we are the option of last resort for people with challenging medical issues. Now they’ll have nothing!

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